Crackly Cackles with Confectioner's Kink

To all of you out there who have been loyal, long-time readers of this work of art, namely my blog, namely me... you know that we have to, from time to time, take one of our shows on the road, to drive to a little town somewhere in the Black Forest that is too small to have its own opera house and perform one of our pieces in their municipal theatre. For whatever reason, getting on a bus and driving 2 hours to the nether-regions of German hickdom and putting on a show and then driving back, is stressful. We had two of these this week.

I try to go onto the Schlemmer Atlas website before I go on one of these trips in order to find out what kind of decent restaurants one can find wherever we are going. Schlemmer is Germany’s Michelin Guide, or, for you Americans, an online Zagat. Before I went to Schramberg, I looked up where a nice restaurant was, and even made a little map on Mapquest to find it when we arrived. I asked a lady that I found near the theatre where ”Hauptstrasse” was. She asked what it was I was looking for, and I blanked when I tried to remember the name of the restaurant. I only had the address, and, if she could just point me to the right street, I am sure I could find it.

“Oh. Well, what is the address?”
“Hauptstrasse 11”, I said.
“You mean ‘Schlossberg’. Just go down the hill here and you’ll find it.”

Great, I thought. Cute, little town. Good food. Easy show to sing. Great.

I find the restaurant. I go in and the place is empty. I mean, it seems as though not a living soul had been there in decades. Two wrinkly old ladies in all-black and pearls were sitting at one of the tables, smoking what must have been two cigarettes in each hand judging from the carcinogenic cloud hovering like a ghostly presence above the table—an early morning mist out which stuck two ghastly figures.

The ensuing conversation should have prompted me to turn on my heel and flee, but I didn’t. I don’t know what it is about ‘fight or flight’ but the flight part of it always seems to elude me. What can I say, I am a pussy, especially when confronted by a couple of old rags whose pussies have long-ago grown shut and wrinkled into the “oyster shucker” comment from “Something about Mary.” They seemed to be digruntled by this fact and I am not helping... Even perhaps more frightening would be that they, in their decrepit states, could actually still be gettin’ it on but with each other. You ick me out, imagination. Stope that. Anyway, I was filled with fear from their black bleeding auras, convinced somehow that if I didn’t eat their food and like it, I might become a part of tomorrow’s fare.

The ensuing repartée went something like this:

“Guten Tag. Sind Sie offen?”
“Hätte nicht wir würden geschlossen.”
“Uh...ok.” I start to leave, only realizing that this was a joke. In fact, as it turns out, it is the perfect German joke, the one designed to make whomever has just had the effrontery to speak to you turn instantly to dust. Turning back, I then say,
“Ah, das war ein Witz. Entschuldigung, ich brauche manchmal ein bißchen Zeit die zu verstehen.” And then promptly found myself a table in the back where the glares and cancer of my “hostesses” could affect me the least.

A quick translation, and, hopefully a clarification, as well, as to why I needed a moment: “Good morning. Are you open?”
“If we weren’t open, we would be closed.”

Since “geschlossen” or “closed” means closed both in the sense of “not open for business” and “locked”, she was telling me that, of course they were open, otherwise they would have locked the door. This kind of statement has the effect of both saying “of course we are open, stupid. When you turned the door handle, and pushed you found yourself inside, didn’t you?” and, more subtly, of course, “If we had seen you coming, we would have closed up shop and pretended no one was home.” Perhaps, ok, very perhaps, I may have overblown the second innuendo about the same time that I was dismissing the images of spiders crawling up and down the arms of the pale-white Hexes and the baby’s arm that one of them seemed to be devouring à la “Nightmare Before Christmas”. I think an escape with an obligatory “eek” might have been in ordnung.

I pulled myself together in a dark corner. The food was actually not bad. It did sit heavily in my stomach, though, because, as I left the restaurant, I walked out of the door to look on what seemed a familiar image. There, across the street stood the hotel I had seen earlier on the web. Huh? God-dammit. I went to the wrong, fucking restaurant. I kicked myself all the way back to the theatre.

Note to self, write down the NAME of the restaurant when completing a web search for a nice restaurant next time. Who knows what ill-advised patrons lips or belly button may be gurgling through my digestive tract right now.

The bigger they are...

I just wanted to say what I hope, by now, is obvious: I believe that if the Democrats take over Congress in November, it is VERY likely that GW will get impeached. The papers don’t seem to be willing to say it, and frankly, I am ok with that. I would hate for the ultra-Conservatives to get a whiff of a possible backlash and send all of their sisters and their cousins and their aunts to the polls because of some bully pulpit coalition. So, for now, we’ll just keep it on the “down low” amongst us. People, even many conservative-leaning undecided will be voting Democrat in November and then Bush is going down Nixon style. Mark my words.

I am supposed to be Unitarian Universalist, according to a computer program. Very interesting. Too bad I intend on living my entire life as an Episcopalian. I highly recommend you take the 20-question test on the “Belief-O-Matic” and tell me what you “should” be.

See here (ok, I am too retarded to post this as a link and this is, to my knowledge, shameful in this day and age.)

http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

I would also like to give a shout out to a blogsman that I have, of late, enjoyed reading:

http://blandwagon.blogspot.com/

Biggun'

Sometimes I forget how big I am. It always used to scare me, as a child, when I would invariably hurt the other kids with whom I was playing. I didn’t mean to hurt them, it just sort of happened. Often. Our chorus director is leaving to go on to another gig next year and has constructed a web site where he, like every other personal web page, even the one I am ironically writing in now, glorifies his own existence. He has some pictures there of our chorus, though. And, every time, I see a picture of me in a group of familiar faces, I get this surprise in my brain, where my Id has decided I am 5’8” and weigh between 170 and 180 pounds. I am big. I have a big, tenor face and a barrel chest, and I am tall. And I didn’t know I was a Heldentenor for how many years?


In Mahogonny, one of my favorite operas. Evil clowns bad.


I'm the pasty one, 3rd from the right in Czardasfürstin.

To Praise or Not To Praise

I know that most of the people (ok, the two of you) that read this blog must think I am completely off my rocker these days, talking about God, religion, even, God forbid, Jesus was mentioned a time or two. Oh well, you all know I’m mad as a hatter anyway, so what do I have to lose telling you that I have taken up reading passages from a pamphlet that was always in our house when I was young: “Our Daily Bread”. It is, in fact, a daily Christian devotional. I find it to be frequently enlightening.

I have thought for a long time that there are many facets to our lives. One would never think of not addressing our physical, psychological or emotional concerns. A balance of the different aspects of life is what brings us into harmony with our true selves. It is odd, though, in my opinion, that we do not address our spiritual concerns and needs on a regular basis. Even if I don’t agree with the dogma of religion in its entirety, I, when I was in the Motherland, loved going to church. The debate in my head, I found, was healthy, and the prayer, meditation, and music were good for my spiritual existence. That is why I think I should address my spirituality on a daily basis. So, I am going to use “Our Daily Bread” as a primer, to get those stagnant waters of my unknown flowing.

Example...

I found this text as a part of the “Our Daily Bread” today:

“Because we were created in God's image, our lives do have meaning for both time and eternity. God made us for His glory and placed us on earth to honor Him.”

I just don’t understand this as a concept. Ok, I understand it; I just don’t see it that way at all. The “created in God’s image” thing makes sense, but, like a child, living our lives to their fullest in their own intricate possibilities seems the best way to glorify our coming into existence. And, excuse me, I know it may be one of the many philosophical mysteries of this whole genre, but I can’t imagine God creating us to honor Him. That makes no sense to me. Why would he do that? Why would we even think that God would do that? Has He nothing better to do? Don’t you find long strings of questions in a text annoying?

I do not claim to know why God create us. But, to glorify Him can’t be it. That is so diva-ish. ‘I allow you to live only to worship me.’ is not a phrase I could imagine God saying. I mean, really....

Jesus

Things to add to permanent memory if only because I may never see them again: Chris dancing around in his t-shirt, his blue cast on his right arm, doing what I like to call his “butt-wiggling” to Erasure. He’s not bad, really, except for the fact that he likes to close his eyes and semi snap his fingers like he’s listening to some beatnik poet while tripping, lost in the beat, only to open his eyes at my laughter. There’s the other, obvious strangeness about the dance, as well...we’ll just call this effect “floppy”—I think you know what I mean.


Easter is a pretty important holiday for me. I take the idea of self-sacrifice as represented by Jesus rather seriously. I tried to fast on Friday but ended up pulling my hair out by 6 and “was forced” to eat something. My friend Saskia gave me the perfect rationalization: in Muslim cultures, fasting during Ramadan is only until the sun goes down. Weirdly, though, as a side note, the sun is going down at about 8:30 here. We have so much less sunlight than in America in the winter that it somehow evens out with a full blast of rays all spring/summer long. Yay higher latitudinal existence!

At 11 PM on Saturday, what must have been every solitary bell in the city was peeling its loud peel. Chris says that this may be because it was 12 PM in Jerusalem when they rang. I have to admit, I was overcome with emotion at this. I know that most of the people that read this blog are not “believers” per se, but...

In my opinion, it is not wholly important that one believe that Jesus Christ was the actual Son of God in order to be a Christian. Most people, even ones that take the Bible literally, pick and choose what they may see as a parable and what actually took place. Many conservative Christians today have a yardstick to gauge whether you, in their eyes, are a Christina or not. This usually includes believing in a whole list of things that meet up to their idea of what the dogma is or should universally be. I do not think, though, that one need necessarily believe that Noah actually built an ark able to house two of every living animal aboard in order to understand the real meaning of the story. Nor is it necessary to believe that Jesus was the “son” of God in order to understand the significance his holy teachings. If the end result is the same, that we live by his teachings, who can say what part of my trip getting there was necessary or not?

So, basically, I believe that the story of Jesus is a mystery in some ways to us (you know, the old conundrum, if God had no wife, how did he have a Son?) If the story of Jesus is a parable, then the sacrifice of Jesus by His Father must have been the greatest one possible in that it describes a parent giving a child’s life for the benefit of others (they always say that the pain that a parent has at the loss of a child cannot be matched by anything on Earth.) This sacrifice, then, was the ultimate sacrifice that God could have made, all in order to send the World on a new path of enlightenment, based on the structure of Jesus’ teachings.

One has to admit, from an historical context, that the teachings of Jesus greatly improved the world. When one imagines how the world was before Jesus and what the world could have been without the concept of forgiveness and love, one sees a dark shadow of the reality that we all now share.

(One need only look to the Middle East to see what happens when a culture still believes in the Old Testament principles of ‘an eye for an eye’ This is a culture locked in a never-ending cycle of paying people back for how they have been wronged, instead of turning the other cheek, and simply forgiving someone who may have seriously wounded you in body, mind or spirit.)

Easter is significant to me, because it represents the turning of the world toward light, allowing Man to shed his shackles of small-mindedness and look to how the future could be. When Christians say “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”, I understand that a society where we love one another and exist together in peace is possible, because that is what Heaven must be like. Our future together on this world, in the brightest corners of my imagination, is just like the beginning of Spring where Easter is placed, budding, bending toward the Sun, growing like the Phoenix from ashes and dust into a regal bird ready to take flight.

The chocolate also helps.

Ok, double ick

I just watched my husband, with his new borken arm, lean his head back and pour several tablespoons of Heinz Ketchup (do I get an advertising kick-back here) into his mouth. Ick

One of those things that life contains.

Just saw Brokeback Mountain, finally.

So sad. I know that I sympathized more with these characters because of being gay. But, that being said, Ang Lee is still my favorite director, as he has been since “The Wedding Banquet”. He can just tell a story visual, making every movement and grand scene allegory of some kind. And his timing is impeccable.

The movie just brought up so many memories of unrequited love, the bittersweet nature of life, sadness of loss. It definitely brings up old, long-dormant feelings of “great love”--what it is, what it isn’t.

I feel, in some ways, embittered by this life that we lead—hardened by the path that it has led me on. So much of life is love and so much of love is sadness. And we just look at it, life, as an observer shrugging his shoulders at a catastrophe, unable to change the outcome yet saddened by the circumstance of it all.

Frolicking, visually impaired rodents sans tails.

I finally broke down and started “counting points” again. I don’t know if I should really call this ‘breaking down’ per se. It is more an acknowledgement that I have a bit of an obsessive problem with food—a problem that needs a little bit of a reality check from time to time in order to bring me into balance. Balance, I find is an all-expansive theme in my life. It is so easy to shift out of it, and so hard to come back into it.

That being said, I have been counting points for only three days now, but I feel just great. My body does this very strange thing when I start to limit it...it reacts with a great increase in overall energy. It is funny, that. I once saw a very interesting documentary on PBS with Allen Alda (I have an even greater respect for him seeing him in “West Wing”. The man’s facial expressions are so complex and expressive. I knew he was a great comedic genius from M.A.S.H., but this is something entirely new. Check it out.) He interviews a scientist, on this Nova-esque documentary, who is convinced that one can live much longer if one eats a very low-calorie diet. The burning of food as fuel in the body, the theory goes, creates free-radicals, which, ironically, attack the body and cause it to age. Limiting the number of free radicals in the body, by decreasing the amount of food burnt for fuel, then eliminates their aging effect upon the Organism. (I am really into overuse of capital letters these days; I think it adds to the overall allure of my personality. Frank Lloyd Wright seemed to like them too (see “The Living City”, his commentary on all that woes America and the World.) Some people may be so bold as to call this another intellectual affectation on my part. Hmmm. I think I agree with That.) Anyway, in the show they show a whole group of elderly mice, the control group of which just sort of lay in the corner of their cage only to get up and eat or drink every once in a while. The other group which are fed less calories look like mice half their age, jumping around and frolicking like cute little micies. Just think, you could be one of the frolicking mice if you were to spend the rest of your life consuming no more that 1500 calories per day.

As a side note (as though this entire blog is not some meandering side note) I would just like to mention that I now have a running list of three things that simply must be done on a daily basis. They are, in order of importance:

1. Practice. How else can I ensure my future?
2. Work on doctorate. Idem.
3. Exercise. Fatty fatty two by four.

Unfortunately, though, I have only been paying attention to my garden as I am scrambling to get things ready before the last frost (in May...is that late, or what?) I must really come to the eternal question ‘What is of real importance here?’ My garden or my future as Heldentenor du Jour Deutschlands? Hmmm, again. Methinks the answer seems obvious. Let’s, for now, call it the Answer.

Hughes of Gray

I think that, as an artist, one of the most difficult things to do is to block out the constant noise that the world creates. I don’t mean this literally, of course. I mean, really, that one must, in order to create something from within, block out all of the naysayers of this life who have constantly told me, in one way or another, that I can’t do what I am trying to do.

In this time, when my work to become a Heldentenor has been sporadic and, in some ways lifeless, I have had to do some soul searching in order to come up with who is at fault for my lack of constant spunk that will get my career of f the ground. I can only point the finger at myself, of course. But, in this case, what I am guilt of is not shutting down all of the people in my life who will poo poo this dream of mine, to just smile, give them the finger, and walk gently way.

In a lot of ways, I admire Chris for this. Albeit devoid of any kind of ambition, he, nonetheless, never questions for even one split second his talent as an artist. My mental game, on the other hand, seems to be an unending feud between my inner selves, all of them doubtful, and all of them ready to stop progress in its tracks. When I just think for one moment whether I have the abilities to do what I am wanting to do, I have no doubt that I can. Now, it is time for the heart to catch up, though. Not long behind will come what soul I may have left, and then I can put the proverbial triumvirate together. Add a little luck (this is starting to sound like a Disney spell) and the Fates will give this Spruce Goose the lift she needs to actually be airborne.

Must remain positive. Must work daily.

Wanderlust

I think people who have known me in the past would be pretty amazed at how much I enjoy getting a little bit of exercise, and being out of doors. Yesterday, Chris and I worked in the garden for 4 or 5 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Today (Sunday), I woke up on Sunday dying to take a walk in the woods. Walking and hiking are really popular pastimes in Germany, and I have bought a map showing all of the trails around the area and plan on trying them out to find my favorites. Did you know that you could walk from here to Switzerland on just trails? There’s an intricate network of walking trails here with little signs on the trees every quarter of a mile or so. So, if you want to walk to Switzerland, you just follow the yellow diamond all the way there. Crazily, it is a comfort, albeit a haunting one, to know that, in case of the Apocalypse, we could all still “get around” even if it meant a backpack and a walking stick.

I thought it might be fun to actually do some backpacking starting from here. Two or three days on the trails would not get me even close to Switzerland, but, I would definitely be deep in the Schwarzwald. That would be so, dare I say it, neat.

Made a reservation to hear a Heldentenor sing Parsifal in Frankfurt at the end of the month. It’s cool, because I was allowed to call the theatre and get tickets that cost only what the taxes on them cost (greatly reduced in price) because I work on the German stage. Stuart Skelton is supposed to be quite good...an Australian.